Former U.S. Marine rapes 69 yr old Asian woman and claims self defense Options

[MinhKhiem]

A former U.S. marine raped and hospitalized a 69 year old Asian women and his defense was he did it in self defense.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/crimeandcourts/ci_18783672

A former U.S. Marine accused of kidnapping, raping and beating a 69-year-old Hawthorne woman into a coma insisted Monday that he acted in self-defense because he feared for his life and believed she was a gang member.

During his closing argument before an Airport Courthouse jury, Gary DeVaughn LaBon, 50, denied raping the senior citizen, claiming she crashed into him on her bicycle as he ran from two men.

"This was self-defense," said LaBon, who represented himself in the now 2-week-old trial. "I was in fear for my life. ... These people told me they would make me disappear."

Judge Kathryn Solorzano ordered jurors to disregard most of what LaBon said during his argument.

By late afternoon, jurors announced they had reached verdicts on two of three counts of rape, attempted murder and kidnapping and would continue deliberating today.

As LaBon addressed the jury, Solorzano and Deputy District Attorney Robin Allen interrupted repeatedly, saying his statements were not based on any evidence produced during the trial. LaBon did not testify on his own behalf and presented little evidence during the proceedings
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to dispute the prosecution's case against him.

LaBon, a trained truck driver, either did not understand rules of evidence or was trying to tell a story without facing cross-examination.

He is charged with attacking the woman Sept. 18, 2009, at Jefferson Avenue and 129th Street as she collected aluminum cans on trash day in her neighborhood. Police officers, responding to a resident's 911 call that two people appeared to be having sex on her lawn, testified that they found LaBon on top of the victim, his hands wrapped around her throat, choking her.

LaBon, his pants down, ran from officers, but tripped in the street. He fought with two officers until a third shot him with a Taser. Testimony during the trial revealed he was wearing a condom that tests revealed contained the victim's DNA.

The victim, in a coma for three weeks, suffered serious brain damage. LaBon is accused of punching her repeatedly in the face, so hard that it caused bleeding in her brain. The grandmother remains hospitalized in a nursing home, where she is unresponsive, unable to feed herself, speak or stand.

In his argument, LaBon tried to explain that he was in an altercation with two men at a convenience store at El Segundo Boulevard and Prairie Avenue. The men chased him, he said.

LaBon, who is black, said he believed the victim on a bicycle was a Latino gang member because she was clothed in a dark jacket with a hood. Telling jurors that there is a war in the streets, LaBon said he collided with the bicycle as he fled from the men.

"I was trying to protect my life," he said. "I had no intention of raping this woman. ... I didn't rape this woman. I didn't attempt to rape this woman. I didn't know her age."

However, no evidence was presented at trial about any men chasing him.

LaBon contended he did not drag the woman away from her bicycle, which was found two homes from where officers found her lying unconscious on the ground.

Allen told jurors in her argument that there was no way LaBon could mistake the small Asian woman for a gang member, and he should have recognized she was a senior citizen. Allen said the evidence clearly showed - from the victim's injuries to forensic evidence to the testimony of police officers - that the victim was knocked off her bike, dragged, raped and nearly killed.

"You have a right to your personal safety," Allen said. "She had a right to be out there and to be safe on the streets."

LaBon, who could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted, previously served time in Pennsylvania for sexually assaulting a woman and drug charges.

[austronesian0sai...]

this seems to be an everyday occurrence in America. Not just asians, but white women and Mexicans.

[KraterosHellas]

i'm sure if the offender was a white man, it would have been ignored.

[austronesian0sai...]

i'm sure if the offender was a white man, it would have been ignored.

Yeah sure... Because that happens everyday.

[KraterosHellas]

Yeah sure... Because that happens everyday.

who knows?

[fivers]

69 lol